General Electric to invest $150m in Nigeria

United State’s industrial firm General Electric (GE.N) plans to invest around $150 million in Nigeria by 2017, a senior executive said on Monday.

According to Reuters’ report monitored by Business247 News Online, “There are development projects where we are investing,” Jay Ireland, Chief Executive of General Electric in Africa told the FT Africa Summit in London. GE would also invest in oil and gas industry projects.

Ireland said the Nigeria investment was part of a plan to spend $2 billion in Africa in coming years.

President Muhammadu Buhari, on Saturday in a speech marking Nigeria’s independence day, said GE was “investing $2.2 billion in a concession to revamp, provide rolling stock, and manage” some of the country’s railway lines.

Growth in Nigeria – an OPEC member whose economy, the largest in Africa, is in recession for the first time in more than 20 years due to low oil prices – has been stunted for decades by a lack of investment in its road and rail network.